The Conservatives can’t have it both ways: their plan is only stronger than the Liberals’ if it is applied in such a way as to impose onerous deadlines and real costs on emitters. So they can’t claim their plan is tougher at the same time as they complain about the costs of Dion’s.

Of course, when I use phrases like “can’t have it both ways” and “they can’t claim,” I mean they certainly will claim and they probably can have it both ways. This is the evolving John Baird Two-Step, which the minister has rehearsed in a few interviews this summer: Why put up with the nasty cost of the Liberal tax scheme, when you can have the much tougher, more responsible Conservative plan instead?

This analysis strikes me as taking the Conservatives’ plan much too seriously. It’s been well over a year since the policy was announced — where’s the implementation plan? Perhaps the Tories thought there’d have been an election by now, sending everything back to Square One, but no such luck.

The approach here seems to be to promote a ridiculously tough policy that you have no intention of actually putting into practice. That way you can really have it both ways.

David Reevely

By day, I'm an editor and sometime writer for the Ottawa Citizen. By night, as a personal project, I write here, working out how to be a libertarian and an environmentalist at the same time.
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